The Performance Of The John Hopkins Hospital In Baltimore

Process of Care Paper
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Process of Care Paper
The modern healthcare is characterized by quality measures that determine how well facilities provide care to patients. With the performance of hospitals publicly reported, consumers can make informed decisions about the facilities they visit. Through the Medicare website, consumers can compare different hospitals in their locality and choose one based on some performance criteria. This paper examines the performance of The John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and compares it to two of its competitors: Saint Agnes Hospital and Sinai Hospital. The paper also describes the pros and cons of publicly reporting hospital performance data.
The Medicare website offers a platform through which consumers can compare hospitals based survey of patient experiences, timely and effective care, complications and deaths, payment and value of care, psychiatric unit services, and unplanned hospital visits (Medicare.gov, n.d.). Of all these measures, the survey of patient experiences is only one with comprehensive data. From the Medicare website, the three Baltimore-based hospitals offer acute care as well as emergency services. However, John Hopkins Hospital is the only one where outpatient departments can receive lab results electronically. Also, John Hopkins can track patients’ tests, results, and referrals electronically while Saint Agnes and Sinai cannot. The Medicare website also indicates that John Hopkins hospital uses outpatient safe surgery checklist while the other two do not. Both John Hopkins and Sinai make use of inpatient safe surgery checklist and patient safety hospital culture survey. From the general information on the comparison of the three hospitals, it is evident that John Hopkins performs better on all criteria.
The data on the survey of patient experience is comprehensive for all the three hospitals and consumers can easily make informed decisions based on it. According to Stein, Day, Karia, Hutzler, and Bosco (2015), favorable patient experience is an essential component of patient-centered care. In fact, it is a metric used to calculate payment to hospitals. Therefore, there is a financial imperative for hospitals to improve the experiences of patients. The data on the survey of patient experiences shows that John Hopkins outshines Sinai and Saint Agnes on all metrics. 82% of patients reported that nurses at John Hopkins “always” communicated well compared to 75% and 77% for Saint Agnes and Sinai hospitals respectively. Furthermore, 81% of patients reported that doctors at John Hopkins “always” communicated well compared to 79% and 76% for Saint Agnes and Sinai hospitals respectively. For patients who received help whenever they need, John Hopkins and Saint Agnes both had a score of 61% while Sinai scored 59%. John Hopkins scored better than the two hospitals on the explanation of medicine usage, cleanness of rooms and bathrooms, the quietness of the areas surrounding their rooms, patient understanding of care received, and hospital recommendation. Based on the patients’ experience survey, it is conclusive to say that John Hopkins offers a better quality of care compared to Saint Agnes and Sinai Ho...